Sunday, September 4, 2011

My friend C's birthday is in just a few days. Never one to miss a chance to bake, I offered her a dozen cupcakes in any flavor she wanted. Now had I been in her shoes I would've thrown out something crazy...like passionfruit mousse cupcakes with macarons on top! But C is apparently too sweet to do that. Well actually...she can be pretty hilariously snarky when she wants to be. So the truth is just that C really really loves pumpkin cake and asked me for exactly that. Too easy, right?

Well actually...there's no such thing as too easy when the results taste this fantastic! I immediately turned to Tartelette's delicious spiced pumpkin cupcake recipe, which I'd tried and loved before. It's got just the right amount of cinnamon and other fall spices to make me want the leaves to hurry up and reveal their glorious colors. I topped off these autumn beauties with generous swirls of my signature not-too-sweet cream cheese frosting. Happy (almost) Birthday, C!

Isn't fall baking just great? I want to hear all about what you can't wait to bake in the coming months! And my friends in the Southern Hemisphere, feel free to share your favorite spring treats, too!

P.S. - Since I've talked about the importance of analyzing your work and having others critique it, I'm going to share my thoughts about the above photo. My hope with the background and tray was to add additional texture and layers to the photo. Plus their cooler tones were meant to tone down the warmer orange of the pumpkin. An issue I had with this shoot was with trying to even out the lighting. Even in the final photo, the light coming from my window to the right is too strong. So the frosting of the bottom-most cupcake ended up a bit bright. To prevent this, I should have reflected more light from the left and/or used a black board to reduce the light from the window. Agree with me? Disagree? I'd love to hear it!

XIAOLU'S NOTES: I always use canned pumpkin for my baking due to its smooth texture and consistent thickness. If you really want to use a homemade puree, I recommend you drain it using cheesecloth or a coffee filter to ensure that it doesn't add too much liquid to the batter. This frosting recipe makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes fairly generously. If you prefer a thin layer of frosting, feel free to scale the recipe down by 1/3 or even 1/2.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease the top of a standard 12-cup muffin pan (in case you get some “muffin top” action). Line pan with 12 baking liners. Sift the flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl; set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk to combine pumpkin, milk, and vanilla; set aside also.

Using an electric mixer on medium-high, cream butter and sugar together until light in color and fluffy. Turn mixer down to low, and add egg and yolk. Beat well to combine. Next, add 1/3 the flour mixture, then 1/2 the pumpkin mixture, another 1/3 of the flour mixture, the remaining pumpkin mixture, and the last 1/3 of the flour mixture, mixing to combine after each addition. Fill baking liners about 3/4 full (I always use my large cookie scoop for this). If you've filled all 12 baking liners and still have more batter, you can fill standalone baking cups 1/2 full with batter. Bake 20 to 27 minutes OR until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (a few tiny crumbs are OK but there should be NO wet batter). Cool 3 minutes in pan, then remove from pans to wire racks to finish cooling completely. Pipe or spread on cream cheese frosting, and enjoy!

Sift powdered sugar into a small bowl. In a larger mixing bowl, cream the butter, salt, 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, and vanilla until thoroughly blended and fluffy. Add the cream cheese, a chunk at a time, beating after each addition (just enough to work it in until it’s smooth). Taste the frosting, adding and beating in more sugar as needed. Be careful to avoid overbeating or the cream cheese may start to break down and become gloppy. If not using immediately, chill until needed, then beat again until smooth just before using.

Love the simplicity of these cupcakes and your have a perfect swirl on them, amazing! Love the styling, but that's obvious! Welcome Fall! I cannot wait to: bake an apple pie, while simmering chili on the stove, having cider and watching football!! #falllover

These cupcakes look so great! I'm going to prepare them for the next party - maybe with some cranberries? ;)I'm sometimes struggling with this overexposition problem too. What I really love is cloudy wheather - but if too much light comes from the right, a transparent curtain helps too (although it adds a kind of rippled texture). Reflecting more light didn't really work for me when dealing with too much light from the source.

Helene - I appreciate your feedback very much! I actually did lower the brightness a little since I first wrote that critique. But I'm also usually my own worst critic so I appreciate knowing how others view it!

i love pumpkin, so I agree with your friend, C. sometimes, you just gotta go for what you know you love! :) I'm looking fw to fall root vegetables. although, i'm not ready to say bye to summer veggies yet. for pumpkin cake, instead of flouring the pan, i make a sugar-cinnamon mix, and use that to "release" the cake from the pan. the result is a sweet finger-licking crust (lightly crisp)...this technique is better for loaves, and not cupcakes..but just maybe something you might try? regarding the photo - i'm no expert but cannot pick anything wrong with the photo! it looks great. ps - i am often shocked by what photo TS rejects. have a great week!

I love the textures and colors on your photo! But disagree with you on the lighting (I think it is great and it gives a fallish feel to it).Spring is coming my way, so I'll keep this recipe for next year. The cupcakes look so beautiful, sweetie! xx

fall already?! no way! its just started to cool down here like a regular summer time after 2 months of triple digit hell. Its still summer for us. Beautiful cupcakes and i have no complaints about having these. The photograph is really pretty. The uncluttered (so YOU) styling and the dark same tone background brings out the beauty. Love that tray. is it cast iron? the frosting does not look too bright to me, at least not in my screen.

Yum. I'm dying to start baking with pumpkin again, but it has been close to 100 degrees every day for the last week, so I NEED it to cool down! Loved hearing the photo analysis. You are so gifted and I have learned so much on your site. The idea of "cooling" down the background is a good one and I do think it worked for you. Being a complete rookie, I have never thought of that and in my most recent post, everything came out WAY too warm. Now I want to go re-shoot my photos with a cooler background! Ok, not really, but I know what to do next time. Thank you!

These look great! I was wondering if I could make them with cake flour? Also, I notice this is missing the usual allspice and cloves. Is the taste notably less spicy? I actually WANTED a recipe that didn't require me to go get more spices, but I also want a flavorful cake. :)

I think it's best to stick with the flour called for usually, but if you really want to try cake flour add 2-3 tablespoons more to compensate for the lower gluten content. As for the spices, I think the spicing is more subtle than some other autumn cakes, but I found it perfect. I'm a pumpkin lover who doesn't want the pumpkin flavor overpowered by too much spice.

I look at your video concerning the way you frost your cupcake and it seem to be so simple. My trouble is that the frosting melt after my swirl is done and it doesn't look good. Do you have a solution for my problem. Thanks!

Hi there! Thanks for your question -- you do need to have a certain firmness of the frosting to have the swirl stay put. I can highly recommend my not-too-sweet cream cheese frosting using COLD cream cheese (yes, cold!). Please search for my black sesame matcha cupcakes to find that frosting (just omit the green tea/matcha powder and include vanilla extract for a plain cream cheese frosting). Swiss meringue buttercream also has a nice firmness and you can find that in my recipe archive as well. Other than those 2, you will probably need to add a LOT of powdered sugar to a frosting recipe and/or use shortening to make it firmer. I don't like to do either, so I'd highly recommend the 1st 2 options for taste/health reasons.